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Cerberus Receives 3 “Low” Offers For its Stake in Haya Real Estate

24 May 2019 – El Confidencial

Cerberus may be forced to revise down its price expectations for the sale of its real estate platform Haya Real Estate. The US fund had been hoping to receive more than €1 billion for the servicer, which is one of the largest in Spain, but so far the offers it has received amount to just €700 million.

There are currently three candidates in the running, namely, the Italian firm doBank, the US fund Centerbridge and the Asian fund Centricus, according to financial sources – all are familiar faces in the Spanish market and are willing to buy the servicer, but not for the asking price.

The reason is that considerable uncertainty exists over the renewal of Haya’s contract with Sareb, despite Cerberus’s efforts to diversify and grow the servicer’s portfolio with purchases such as the Apple Portfolio from Santander last year, and the agreement to purchase and manage almost all of BBVA’s property. Haya also administers assets for Bankia, Cajamar and Liberbank.

Nevertheless, Haya’s main client is still Sareb, for which it manages €21 million in debt and properties, which account for around half of the platform’s assets. That figure will fall to around a third following the agreement with Divarian, formerly Anida (BBVA), but Sareb wants to significantly reduce both the perimeter of management and the fees that it pays Haya, which would hit the servicer’s revenues hard.

As such, the funds in the running to purchase Haya are requesting protection clauses to cover themselves in the event of the various outcomes from the negotiations with Sareb, which are expected to conclude in September. Whether Cerberus will manage to sell its servicer before then remains to be seen.

Original story: El Confidencial (by Jorge Zuloaga & Ruth Ugalde)

Translation/Summary: Carmel Drake